News

With continuous rain, frequently heavy, throughout the day, the conditions faced by the teams in Swansea yesterday for the third round of the UK Youth Development League (lower age groups) did not dampen their enthusiasm in an enthralling competition.

With rivals Cardiff AAC and Swansea H & AC swapping the lead throughout, Cardiff finally came out on top, winning the final track event, the under 15 boys' 4x300m relay, in great style and heading Swansea by a mere one and a half points, with Cardiff Archers a further 120 points behind in third place.

With one round to go, Swansea lead the division by two league points from Cardiff.

The England Athletics Under 23 and Under 20 championships, held in Bedford yesterday and today, are effectively the British championships and it was excellent to see so many Cardiff athletes taking on the best in the UK and not only taking them on but returning with medals.

Jake Heyward (17) continued his run of form to win a tactical under 20 men's 1500m in 3:55.63 while Owen Smith (47.22 - pictured) and Joe Reid (48.06 after 47.91 in his heat) took first and third places in the under 23 men's 400m. In the Under 23 men's 100m, Sam Gordon won the silver medal and David Omoregie ran a season's best 13.65 to take the silver medal in the 110m hurdles.

Rhianwedd Price (pictured), back home from university in the USA, where she has been clocking up personal best times, was 14th overall finisher today in the Caerphilly 10k road race and first in the women's open race.

Megan Bowen was the first home of the junior women and Rachel Matthews was the best of the F40 ladies.

Cardiff's Jake Heyward continued to eat away at his 1500m best last night at the BMC Gold Standard races in Watford with a time of 3:46.5 which took him to fourth place on the UK under 20 rankings (Jake is only 17).

Other near best performances came from Tom amd Kath Marshall, with Tom running 3:40.2 for 1500m and Kath running 2:03.56 for 800m.

With two gold medals at the IPC European Championships in Grosseto, Italy, including a World, European and Championship record in the discus, Aled Davies is on course to complete the double at the Rio Olympic Games.

Aled's winning throw of 54.14m yesterday in the F42 discus was a huge 4.55m further than his own World and European records of 49.59m. Aled had earlier won the F42 shot put with 16.11m, only two centimetres behind his own World and European records.

On a day in Cardiff that started off rather grey and cold but ended in warm sunshine, Cardiff athletes took home a sackful of medals from the Welsh Championships yesterday.

The senior men's 100m saw Cardiff take the first three places in both the A and B finals, with club athletes occuping six of the eight qualifiers to the A final. There was a clean sweep also in the senior men's javelin and under 17 women's high jump.

Senior club records are of a very high standard and are rarely broken nowadays but Jac Palmer (still only 20) erased Matthew Richards hammer record (64.17m) with a throw of 64.81m.

After a slow start, Cardiff's UK Women's Athletic League team finished with a flourish to win the final event of the day, the 4x400m relay, at the first round match in Bristol on Sunday last, 5th June.

On a day of hot sunshine, Cardiff's ladies showed great team spirit to fill unaccustomed events and none more so than captain Rhiannon Linington-Payne who competed in the long jump and 400m B race (which she won) before taking the first leg in both the 4x100m and 4x400m relays.

With several (too many) absentees, Cardiff's senior men's British Athletics League team had to be content with second place behind Bristol & West at Bedford on Saturday last, 4th June, but still lead the division overall after two rounds, with two to go.

Pride of place goes to captain Brett Morse who contested two events, winning his speciality discus and taking second in the shot put, even though he was scheduled to compete the following day in the Diamond League in Birmingham. Olympian Rhys Williams took maximum points in the 400m hurdles after completing a busy period of competition including achieving the Olympic qualifying time for his event.

Cardiff's Bethan Davies set new Welsh and club records and established herself as the second best ever UK walker over 20k when she won the British Olympic Trials race in Leeds on Sunday, 5th June. Her winning time of 93.48 was, however, an agonising 48 seconds outside the Olympic qualifying time of 93 minutes. For much of the race, Bethan was right on target to qualify but slipped slightly behind the pace in the later stages.

After the race, Bethan commented that, "I am disappointed to have come so close but this is a massive performance after the disappointment of Rome. I did my first ever 20km in training in this park four years ago and I am now half an hour quicker. This shows how far I have come and I will use this as a stepping stone to qualify for London 2017”.